Ex-Metallica Bassist Jason Newsted Details Plans for Musical Comeback

As we reported Friday (Nov. 16), Jason Newsted has reconnected with fans through a new website, but now the former Metallica bassist has laid out details of his musical comeback. In an appearance on the ’Friday Night Rocks’ radio show, Newsted revealed that he’s ready to rock more than just your Web browser.

Blabbermouth has posted a transcript from Newsted’s chat with host Eddie Trunk, in which the bassist says he’s going to release material under the name Newsted Heavy Metal Music.

“I’ve thought about this for a long time, putting my name on a project other than just coming up with a clever name, like Echobrain or Papa Wheelie or something,” explained Newsted. “We have a lot of cool names for projects, but this is the first time with my name and really trying to get out to the people that I played for by the millions in the past with Metallica.”

He went on to say, “Whatever it ends up being — if it’s five songs, 20 songs, 50 songs … I don’t even know what the heck I’m gonna do. I have so much music from over the years. I have a bunch of new stuff … I’m just trying to figure out exactly what I wanna unleash on everybody first. That’s kind of what it’s coming down to — the timing of things and how I wanna hit people with it.”

While assuring Trunk that he still thinks vinyl is “the most endearing and the most personal” format, so “I wanna make sure that that part is there,” Newsted sounds ready to take advantage of digital distribution by releasing a slew of shorter projects, a la the bands who are “doing four tracks at a time in EP form every few months, letting people have some fresh metal.”

For Newsted, it’s a progression of his early days as a tape-trader, and the drive to share that he credits with getting him the Metallica gig in the first place. But instead of having to rely on tapes, envelopes, and postage, “Now I can do that with one push of a button and it’s a squillion people. I know about the labors and what it takes one at a time, and I’m not afraid to do that, but I know that I have the chance now, from all of my hard work for 30 years, I’m gonna be able to share with a bunch of people at once. Anybody that really gives a snot about the music and cares about what I’m doing, I wanna share with them.”

All this renewed activity is the culmination of an odyssey that started when Newsted left Metallica over a decade ago. As he put it, “I did a very serious, reclusive deal. I built a ranch in Montana in the center of a forest of millions of acres of nothing. That kind of thing where I just said, ‘OK, screw it, man! I’m outta here.’ I went that far opposite of my connection with the people. It took me 12 years to come back to earth, and here I am now. And my big, black boots are on the ground and I’m ready to go.”

Click here to view the full transcript of Newsted’s conversation with Eddie Trunk.

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